Modernization is a slippery term with manifold relations to science and technology. In a narrow sense, it is often synonymous with bringing more advanced science or technology to bear, as in modernizing a construction process or production plant. In a broader sense, social scientists describe modernity as a particular form of culture or society dependent on and supportive of science and technology, with the process of creating such a society defined as modernization. (Related concepts are urbanization, the concentration of population into cities, and secularization, the recasting of society from a basis in religious beliefs to one based on rationality, science, and technology.)

Insofar as modernization in the broader sense connotes an undermining of traditional values and is presented as a program with its own normative character, it is also of ethical significance, and has been assessed in both positive and negative terms.

Modernization is a somewhat more...